Mr. Rodriguez, who became president of the United Farm Workers of America after his legendary father-in-law died in 1993, insists that the union's struggle is just as compelling today as in the union's heyday three decades ago, when millions of Americans embraced the downtrodden farm worker as a cause as holy as civil rights.

''La causa,'' Mr. Rodriguez says, means lifting up the lives of more than two million farm workers, many of them Mexican immigrants, who toil stooped under a scorching sun, hoeing and harvesting, often for just $5 an hour.

But he faces an uphill battle turning ''la causa'' into a popular crusade because, he readily acknowledges, he does not have Mr. Chavez's charisma and because these are the 1990's, not the liberal 60's. That was the era of the grape boycott, when Mr. Chavez appeared on the cover of national magazines, when national politicians like Robert F. Kennedy marched alongside the farm workers and when hordes of college students picketed supermarkets on the union's behalf.

The union is trying to thrust itself back into the spotlight by undertaking the largest unionization drive in the nation today -- a battle to organize 20,000 workers in California's strawberry industry, which is based in Watsonville, in the state's fertile central coast.

It is the first time since the early 1980's that the farm workers have flexed their muscles in a big way. Mr. Chavez become an icon for liberals in the 1960's and 70's by using strikes, boycotts, public pressure and a famous 25-day fast to become the first person to organize America's farm workers after other unions had failed.

But from around 1983 until his death 10 years later at age 66, Mr. Chavez turned inward and did far less organizing in the field, sometimes even relying on direct mail to push his causes -- a strategy that some former union leaders say made the union lose touch with farm workers. After the union's membership soared to 80,000 in the early 1970's, it plunged to less than 20,000 by the end of the decade because growers refused to renew contracts and because Mr. Chavez concluded that the climate was too hostile for organizing under two Republicans: President Ronald Reagan and Gov. George Deukmejian of California.

''Cesar created all this capacity for real change in the lives of farm workers all through the 60's and 70's, but then it got squandered in the 80's,'' said Marshall Ganz, who was the union's organizing director in the late 1970's and is now an instructor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. ''He retreated from organizing and turned inward, and that took the union off the map for years. That was a tragic loss, not just for the farm workers, but for all of us.''

The stakes in the strawberry drive are high for farm workers because success will increase the union's membership by more than two-thirds and set the stage for recruiting tens of thousands of grape, lettuce and other produce workers. The stakes are also sizable for organized labor overall because the A.F.L.-C.I.O. is pouring more than $1 million into the drive to show that union organizing is back and that the revived labor movement wants to make common cause with the humblest workers.

It is a big difference from the 1960's when the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and its president, George Meany, gave little help, and then only reluctantly.

''Meany's position was farm workers would never be organized, and it wasn't worth wasting money on them,'' said Paul Schrade, former head of the United Auto Workers in California. ''There's far more support coming from the A.F.L.-C.I.O. now. They really believe in this cause.''

In seeking to return to the union's glory days, Mr. Rodriguez has focused on California's $550-million-a-year strawberry industry because berry pickers have perhaps the most grueling job in agriculture. They hunch over for 10, 12 hours a day, their hands turning crimson as they pull the red berries off the foot-tall plants.

Many workers complain of back injuries, of not having health insurance, of not being able to afford decent housing, of being discarded when they turn 50. Some workers say that growers force them to eat whatever unripe, green berries they pick.

''We wanted to focus on a work force in desperate need,'' Mr. Rodriguez said. ''Their wages come out to $8,500 a year. Even if families can afford a home, they often have to live two, three, four families together. We see our challenge as being out there to create a better life for these workers.''

Arguing the other side, foremen and management consultants often tell strawberry pickers that the union lies and wants only the workers' dues.

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''They set the stage by making us look like a real monster, and that I resent very much,'' said Miguel Ramos, a strawberry grower in Watsonville who says he pays pickers $7 an hour. ''They present the industry as violating basic human rights by claiming that we don't provide sanitation or clean water and don't pay the minimum wage and we carry out sexual harassment. It's not true. As is normal with every industry, there are probably a few bad apples.''

In liberal and labor milieus, Mr. Rodriguez has won considerable praise for steering the union back to what made it famous: organizing in the fields.

''What they're trying to do today with organizing is terrific,'' Mr. Ganz said. ''It's long overdue.''

Each day, Mr. Rodriguez and more than 40 organizers fan out to visit fields, trailers and motel rooms along the gentle slopes of the Pajaro and Salinas Valleys. Until farm workers are told that he is the union's president, some ignore Mr. Rodriguez, a thin, unassuming 47-year-old with a face less round and more angular than his father-in-law's.

''Cesar had more charisma, but Artie's a better manager,'' said Miguel Contreras, a former United Farm Workers official who is executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. ''Cesar was publicly perceived as more spiritual; Artie is more pragmatic. Cesar was never a fiery speaker and neither is Artie, but at a gut level, they both really connect when they speak to workers.''

In an interview in his temporary strawberry-campaign office, where posters of his father-in-law look down at him, Mr. Rodriguez voices confidence that the union is on the brink of its first big strawberry victory. The reason is that the nation's largest strawberry grower, Coastal Berry, has agreed to remain neutral during the unionization drive; that is to say, its managers will not denounce the union or intimidate or punish union supporters.

That is an important concession because some workers say they have been fired for supporting the union and because three growers in the Watsonville area were so anti-union that they plowed their strawberries under after their workers voted to unionize in 1994 and 1995. That left their workers without jobs and caused many local farm workers to think twice about backing the union.

''We had to take it on as an industry because every time we won at a company, they'd plow under their fields,'' Mr. Rodriguez said.

In light of Coastal's pledge to remain neutral, Mr. Rodriguez predicted that by August, more than 1,200 Coastal workers would vote to join the union -- a development that he said would cause workers with other growers to follow suit.

In a novel strategy, the farm workers have lined up the support of several supermarket chains, including Ralph's, A&P and American Stores, which have signed statements backing the strawberry workers' right to unionize without intimidation. Mr. Rodriguez hopes that once a few growers are unionized, these supermarkets will favor their berries over those from nonunion growers, thus pressuring those growers to stop battling the union.

The farm workers first got the Monsanto Company, which sold its strawberry holdings to Coastal, and then Coastal to sign a neutrality pledge after the A.F.L.-C.I.O. lent a big -- and threatening -- hand. It helped file lawsuits charging Monsanto's strawberry operations with violating wage and hour laws. It sent picketers to stores warning shoppers that Monsanto's weed killers might be dangerous. It sent protesters to Monsanto's annual meeting and ran full-page newspaper advertisements accusing Monsanto of exploiting strawberry pickers. Monsanto officials denied exploiting anyone, but, with some senior managers embarrassed by the pressure and feeling sympathetic toward the farm workers, the company agreed to remain neutral.

The labor federation's unusually robust support is a major vote of confidence in Mr. Rodriguez, who was born in San Antonio, the son of a sheet-metal worker. When he was a graduate student in social work at the University of Michigan, he began campaigning for the grape boycott and met Mr. Chavez. Within a year, he had married Mr. Chavez's daughter, Linda, and they now have three children. Copying his father-in-law, he insists on a salary comparable to a farm worker's; his $8,610 salary is a fraction of what most union leaders earn, although the union also provides him with a house.

In recent years, Mr. Rodriguez has led organizing drives that racked up an astonishing 14 victories in a row, for rose, grape, mushroom and strawberry workers. The union's membership has grown to almost 26,000 from 21,000. After some mushroom workers were unionized, their wages jumped by 40 percent to more than $12 an hour.

''I think he's the Martin Luther King Jr. of this generation in that he stands and fights and dedicates his life in a private way and public way to social justice,'' said Richard Bensinger, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s director of organizing. ''He sits on motel floors and speaks to workers. He doesn't do this just in public. He's the real thing. He has increased his union's membership by 25 percent in just a few years. He's a model for the rest of the labor movement to follow.''